Only moments before you were a double-hard, gun toting bastard, yet now you just stand there and whimper like a little bitch while a couple of homeless mutants help themselves? Surely a character like this would let his guns do the talking (even if it meant waking up dead, afterward), but the game prohibits any interaction on your part once the Bandits have been given chance to open their mouths.

To be fair, the sequel is still built on the rock solid foundations of the original, which would make any game into a mind-blowing thrill-ride of cross genre destruction – and Clear Sky is all that. Shadow of Chernobyl took us by surprise and we now know what to expect, so Clear Sky was inevitably going to have to straddle a high hurdle of preconception. In an effort to compensate, however, the Zone has been unbalanced; the survival horror themes replaced by gratuitously difficult and unfair gameplay mechanics; the tense uncovering of a reality rending plotline exchanged for a money-based RPG character skill tree.

Yet this toxic realm is undeniably filled with more mutated life than ever before, and the inequitable challenges will provide a significant longevity for stalwart fans who can push past the built-in frustration.